


Voice of Women

by midnightdiddle (gooseberry)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Growing Up, Mother-Son Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-04
Updated: 2007-04-04
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/midnightdiddle
Summary: The city of the Ancients is silent, just like Sephiroth's head is not. His mother speaks to him constantly, a litany of coos and purrings, lullabies that keep him awake at night.Son, Son, she calls, and he always answers, for she is his mother, and he is her son.--Sephiroth-centric; there aren't a lot of women in Sephiroth's life, but they seem to move and shake him more than anything--or anyone--else.





	Voice of Women

Sephiroth lives in a world of men. There is Professor Gast, who talks to him in the mornings, asking him how he's feeling, teaching him numbers and letters. There is also Hojo, who Gast never calls 'professor,' and who Sephiroth never calls 'father,' even though he knows.

The first woman he ever sees, or hears, is a woman who watches him sadly, and tries to touch his cheek. Hojo grows angry at this, always grows angrier, and sometimes Sephiroth can hear them arguing.

Lucrecia, for that's what her name is, screams at Hojo, and Hojo, for that's who Sephiroth hates, screams back, and Sephiroth sits on the lab table, holding out his arm for Professor Gast's needles.

Lucrecia leaves one winter's morning, quiet and silent, and before she leaves, she presses her lips to Sephiroth's face.

"Be good," she says, and her hands are cold on Sephiroth's shoulders. "Be a good boy for Professor Gast."

Hojo is angry when he learns that Lucrecia is gone, and Gast is a little quieter when he slips the mako into Sephiroth's skin.

Sephiroth doesn't much care, because Sephiroth has never known what good a woman is.

x

Sephiroth sees many women in Midgar. They wear tight, revealing clothing, bright reds and greens and blues, the color of blood and mako and the sky. They reach to him with soft hands, slipping slender fingers through Sephiroth's hair and into Sephiroth's clothes, and Sephiroth holds out his arms, still as ever.

They slip perfume against his skin, rings and bracelets lying cold against his skin, and he wonders what the good of a woman is. She is beautiful, but she is soft, and it's easy to push her to the ground.

Hojo complains daily of this and that, of Gast's meddling and Sephiroth's dallying, and Sephiroth listens as he sits in a high backed chair, arm held out as Gast checks blood pressure and heart rate.

Gast leaves one spring morning, office scattered with half-burnt papers and files. He rests his hand on Sephiroth's head before he leaves, tired and a little old.

"It's for the best," Gast says. "I can't take you with me. It's for the best."

Hojo is furious with the burnt papers and destroyed files. He's even more furious about the missing Ancient woman, and Sephiroth wonders what it is about a woman that can turn the world on its head.

x

Tifa Lockhart is dangerously young. She doesn't know her own mortality, and she doesn't understand Sephiroth's immortality. Sephiroth can't be bothered to explain it to her, though, because he's searching for some kind of answer somewhere in the world, and he's sure the answer would never be in a skinny, awkward teenage girl with a cowboy hat.

Still, it's Tifa that leads him to the mako reactor, and it's in the mako reactor that Sephiroth finds his mother.

He's always known that he's been born of woman, because he is alive, and as a rule, all life is born of woman. It doesn't surprise him that he has a mother, or rather, it _shouldn't_ surprise him that he has a mother, but somehow he is still startled by 'JENOVA,' carved over the door like blood smeared over the lintel.

It's with a feeling close to desperation that he returns, calls out, "Mother, Mother, let me in, Mother," because he never had a mother to call for when he was a child. He feels like a child now, in a nightmare he can't wake up from, and he wants to feel a mother's lips, warm, on his face, to tell him, "Hush, hush, be good."

It's Tifa who catches him, though, sweating in the summer heat and fire, hair plastered to her cheek.

"I hate you," she screams, and she's holding up a sword, position all wrong, but she's holding the sword, and she's screaming at him. "I hate you! You killed them, you _killed_ them! I _trusted_ you--"

Sephiroth throws her to the ground, then leaves to retrieve his mother. It's not until the trooper throws him from the bridge that Sephiroth realizes that he's falling for a woman.

x

The city of the Ancients is silent, just like Sephiroth's head is not. His mother speaks to him constantly, a litany of coos and purrings, lullabies that keep him awake at night.

 _Son, Son_ , she calls, and he always answers, for she is his mother, and he is her son.

He retrieved her body, but he's losing piece by piece, all to the ragtag group lead by Strife. Time passes, and there is less of his mother, but her voice is ever louder in his head, a chorus of murmurings that grow in crescendos Sephiroth can never ignore.

Aerith Gainsborough follows him to the Ancient's city, autumn leaves catching in her hair. She kneels below the city, and she prays, and Sephiroth watches her, listening to his mother in his head.

She is beautiful when she dies, just like every other woman has been beautiful before she died. Her eyes are wide, and her mouth is open, and her fingers brush past his coat, slipping warm against his skin as she falls.

His mother screams, and Aerith whispers, and now there's another voice in his head.

When he dies months later, Aerith rests her hand on his head, presses her lips to her forehead.

"It's fine now," she says, and her voice sounds a bit like Lucrecia's, and a bit like JENOVA's. "It's fine now."

Sometimes, Sephiroth feels like a child.

_You're a good boy._


End file.
